COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) -- The effort to stop Senate Bill 1 ended Thursday -- one day before the controversial law banning diversity, equity and inclusion in higher education goes into effect -- because the grassroots organizers said it did not collect enough signatures.
"The referendum, we knew that was a tough barrier to fight, and that's OK because there are other ways to ensure what this state stands for, what the people want," Cryshanna Jackson Leftwich, a professor of public affairs at Youngstown State University, said.
A state-wide coalition of volunteers led by Jackson Leftwich and two other professors at Youngstown State University worked hard to collect 250,000 valid signatures to pause Senate Bill 1. At a press conference Thursday, surrounded by more than 100 boxes full of signatures, the three organizers and regional captains said they just did not have enough time or support.
Judge rules Ohio's EdChoice program is unconstitutionalThe group of organizers were trying to pause the bill by collecting enough signatures to send it to the November ballot for a public vote. Thursday marked the final day of the 90-day window S.B. 1 was eligible to be challenged under this process, called a referendum. See previous coverage in the video player above.
Amanda Fehlbaum, sociology professor at Youngstown State, stressed just how difficult it was to organize this starting from nothing. She said they entered the process with no funding or knowledge of how to make this change.
Fehlbaum said they had hoped and even expected a larger group with existing infrastructure to step in and take over. However, Professor Mark Vopat said larger organizations said it would be too expensive to organize a referendum petition in such a short time, and groups told them they were seeking other avenues.
"I do think we could have pulled this off had we not wasted two weeks waiting on another group or groups to come forward," Fehlbaum said.
The trio said they could not overstate how volunteer-based the effort was, and repeated their gratitude for everyone who helped. Fehlbaum recalled sitting with her husband, who is battling cancer, in a hospital room trying to learn how to finalize paperwork, and leaving Easter Sunday dinner to collect petitions.
"I think Ohio makes it as difficult as possible," Vopat said.
Vopat said momentum was increasing and they were collecting around 4,000 signatures a day toward the end, but they just ran out of time. Fehlbaum said they collected 194,981 signatures across all 88 counties, and still have some petitions to count. The group said they were highly confident they could have done it with just a bit more time, pointing to 1,800 opponent testimonies before the bill was passed.
"The people were ignored. And that's the real crux of it isn't it, people being ignored," Jackson Leftwich. "I have 195,000 people whose signatures demonstrate that being ignored is unacceptable."
What's in Ohio's $60 billion budget?Fehlbaum said the network of volunteers is planning next steps through various legal avenues, and that this is not the end of their challenging S.B. 1. She said it is the end of the petitions; despite other groups asking for signatory information, they felt it was important to protect supporters.
"While I would love to take these boxes of petitions and put them on Jerry Cirino's front door as a visible symbol of how detested this legislation is by the people, we're instead going to spend some of our remaining campaign funds on a shredding service so that information voters shared with us will not be mishandled," Fehlbaum said.
Without the petition, Senate Bill 1 goes into effect Friday. Under the law, diversity, equity and inclusion programming will be banned at universities, faculty unions will see limitations, and professors will have new stipulations for their faculty and tenure reviews.
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